Ronald Reagan liked to poke fun at experts. He often told a yarn about an imaginary meeting with economic advisors. One of them would speak up to challenge another. “Well, sir, that’s fine in practice, but how would it work in theory?”

The dilemma of theory versus practice comes to mind during the current crisis over Joe Biden’s fitness to continue as president. Margot Cleveland, one of the best writers on the intersection of current politics with constitutional law, posted a piece last week in The Federalist calling upon Vice President Kamala Harris to put into operation Section 4 of the Constitution’s 25^th Amendment.

To do this, Harris and a majority of the Biden cabinet members would send a signed document to Congress declaring her to be Acting President of the United States because they have determined Biden is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Cleveland argues that Harris and the cabinet not only have the opportunity to take such drastic action, but the absolute constitutional duty to do so.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has added his voice to those calling for Harris and the cabinet to invoke the amendment.

The recent history of political practice shows that making this happen, or even deciding whether to attempt it, is not as easy as postulating it. There was discussion, but no action, on invoking the amendment under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump.

Eric Felten of RealClear Investigations, writing in The Wall Street Journal, calls the 25^th Amendment “toothless.” What cabinet member, he asks, would dare move against the president on whom his own job depends?

Moreover, if one pursues Margot Cleveland’s logic, as the poet Juvenal famously asked, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (“Who will watch the watchmen”)?

Who judges and enforces whether the vice president and cabinet members have done their duty to execute the 25^th Amendment? How can any of this be accomplished urgently?

What are the consequences if a significant minority of the cabinet publicizes a forceful dissent against the president’s removal?

The recent Supreme Court decision affirming certain absolute presidential powers and immunities underscores the deficiency in the 25^th Amendment process.

A palace coup is hard to do. The 25^th Amendment can be fixed, however, and without a new constitutional amendment.

One who has proposed a credible fix is Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin. He proposed it intending to use it against Donald Trump in 2018 but, as fate would have it, it offers a solution to today’s and future problems.

The answer to the poet’s question quis custodiet ipsos custodes? is tribunatus vigilantiae—an oversight commission.

“An unstable president might fire his cabinet,” Raskin observed when he introduced the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act. But Raskin  noted that the 25^th Amendment does not leave judgment of presidential capacity solely to the cabinet. The amendment calls for the vice president and a majority of the cabinet or the vice president and a majority of “such other body as Congress may by law provide” to transfer power from the president to vice president.

The “body” Raskin proposed to create in 2018, he explained, would

consist of a panel of elder statespersons (former Presidents, Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, Attorneys General and so on), physicians, and psychiatrists—all of them selected in a scrupulously bipartisan and bicameral manner by Congressional leadership.  The body will select an eleventh member as the Chair.  It will only act to conduct a medical examination of the President at the explicit direction of Congress.  And Congress always has the last word under the terms of the 25th Amendment.

In 2020, Raskin again introduced the oversight commission legislation, this time with the support of then Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “This is not about President Trump,” Pelosi insisted.  “He will face the judgment of the voters, but he shows the need for us to create a process for future presidents.”

Of course, now Raskin says the issue is no longer urgent. His spokesman told Fox News following the June 27 debate that Raskin “definitely does not believe there is any crisis compelling immediate action.”

But there is a crisis compelling immediate action. Every American should be concerned not with who is best poised to win the November election, but with having a mentally competent commander-in-chief now.

Now is the moment for all Americans—MAGA diehards, Trump-hating establishment Republicans, Main Street, Wall Street, moderate Democrats, and Squad fire-breathers—to join arm-in-arm to embrace an idea Jamie Raskin hatched to get Trump.

They used to say what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, albeit that was in an unenlightened time before there were trans-ganders and nonbinary geese.

Whatever the clichéd proverb we say, we the people should be talking about urgent and bipartisan enactment, by a veto-proof majority, of some version of Raskin’s oversight commission bill.

Today the nation has a president considered hopelessly impaired and delusional by many of the most influential members of his own party. Without the sort of panel Raskin has proposed, there is no robust mechanism for urgent action to pry his shaky hands from the nuclear football.